


Hope is that Thing with Feathers

by karrenia_rune



Category: Fables - Aesop, Hellenistic Religion & Lore, The Boy Who Cried Wolf - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fic or Treat Meme, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 23:20:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14389227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune





	Hope is that Thing with Feathers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlexSeanchai (EllieMurasaki)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/gifts).



"Hope is that Thing with Feathers" 

He was born with a gift: the gift of precognition. In his early years this ability was thought to be a wonderful gift from the Gods: a way that the lords and ladies of Olympus looked down upon their mortal followers with favor. 

And for a while everything was well. His parents, artisans by trade: his mother a poet: his father a furniture-maker, who already had a girl and another boy.   
Both of his older siblings, the girl with a mane of wheat-blonde hair and a heart-shaped face, was already turning heads, took after her mother, and could weave and spin, and strum the lyre. His older brother was a strong, sturdy lad of seventeen who was already champing at the bit to go on to be a journeyman apprentince, perhaps to take over their father's trade one day.

 

The youngest never grew to be as strong as his brother or as eager for a trade. His talent to predict things however did give a certain reputation in their small town on the outskirts of Athens.  
At first, this gift is helpful, like knowing when and where to cross the street, or selling his father's furniture in the market; however, as time went on, that gift has turned on its head: Nine times out of ten, what he forsees does not come to pass; or it comes out all wrong and the fame that he and his family had once enjoyed evaporated.   
And its baffling: Why should this be so? He does not understand.

Fortune turns on its head and his predictions come to take on a darker and darker cast

I am listening to Athens with my eyes closed. A woman passes by on the avenue: She curses; sings, passes and something falls from her hand. It must be a rose and whenever he bends down in order to pick it up he cuts his hand on a thorn.

He hears or dreams of hammering on the docks, in the wooden seaside villas with its boathouses. and the roaring southwest wind is trapped. Listening to Athens with my eyes closed."

 

Encounter 

One day while he was hanging around in the agora (the city market) he chanced to be among the crowd who saw the bearers of a covered liter having a heated argument with person inside of it. Whoever it was seemed quite vehement about it.

The person stepped out of the covered litter, and crossed the wide avenue at a rapid pace, quickly out-distancing her attendants.

Bartimus did not know what to think and before he could do or say anything else her trajectory intersected with his and they bumped into each other.

He bowed and began to stammer out an apology.

"I think..."

"Whatever it is, dear boy, spit it out. I haven't got all day!"

"You, You're Cassandra, aren't you?"  
"Yes, I'm Cassandra, but I prefer to be called Cassie these days. It's must less complication-frought. And if it's an autograph you're after..."

"No, No," he stammered. It's just that you're the one person who can maybe help understand well, you see,"

"If it's medical advice or Gods' forbid expertise in natural philosophy or physics, you're better of going to see Soactres in his school. He runs it every other day, and twice on weekends."  
Cassandra sighed, in the fall days of the Fall of Troy: a city had once loved even in the dust of the aftermath of war; and even though she was more than a little bitter about she was on the women taken as battle trophies by Agamemnon, there really was no reason to take that bitterness out on this boy.

I'm Bartimus."

In a way that she had never been able to fuller explain or articulate to anyone else, even to her old friend and confindat, Aeneas: Cassandra felt a sudden inexplicable urge to look beyond the surface of skin and bones: in order to see what was within. What she saw was a swirling eddy of images, of possibilities, of things that had been, things that on the knife edge of possiblity; and things yet to be.   
When she came back to herself she felt a sudden affinity for this boy. And it called to her as the gift had once come to her once upon a time. She no longer hears the voice of the Sun-God; and once that would have distressed her something fierce. Now, she fingers if she is cursed to have the give of foresight and never to be believe, well then: so be it.

"You know what, I'll help you, but not here. Follow me."

He follows her as she ask, full of mingled sensations of hopefulness, anticipation and the inescapable feeling of being a cat clinging to a great lady's skirt hem.  
She takes him to manor house the likes of which he could never have imagined.and ushers him within a door with guards in the colors of the House of Ageus. Even a small town boy has had some schooling in the glorious military feats of the Athenian Greeks.

Inside is a great atrium with high ceilings, but Cassandra whisks him past this area and up to the third floor. "Here," she says simply.  
It's a great concave room with a inset pool at one end, humming birds in cages and a piano, along with a simple bed, a closet, and desk and chair. His mother and sister would have loved the decor: he cannot help thinking.

"Very well," she says, We're here. Let's not beat around the bush."

"What?" he stammers.

"Hmm, never thought I'd be in the position of giving advice to someone else, but here we go. One: here's the thing: This ability of yours can be either a curse or a blessing; it's all a matter of perspective."

"So what should I do?" Bartiemus griped. "It's not like I can just will it away."

"No, no, you can't do that. She paused and looked at him closely. "How old are you?"

"Fourteen."

"Your parents do not hold out any foolish hope that that is just a passing phase and you will grow out of it, do they?"

"No, no, my folks have been very supportive."

"Well, that's good then," she sighed.

"In my case, it never left me, no matter what. So, my advice, is tell it like it isn't; and you'll have a much better chance of being believed."

"I still do not understand," he replied. It's not a matter of being believed if nothing bad happens, right?"

"Only if something bad happens: Honey, a philosopher worth his salt will tell that belief, like beauty and so many other things: is in the eye of the beholder."

She shrugged and regarded him not unkindly, "In other words, boy: hope is that thing with feathers. That perches in the soul; And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all/ And sweetest in the gale is heard that kept so many warm."

"So, what, then?" he demanded.

"Perhaps I should take you on as my apprentice; how's that, then?" 

"Apprentice?" 

"Sure? Would you like that?"

"I guess so," he replied.

"Does your 'gift' have anything to say about it?" she asked not with a great deal of anticipation. She had been alone with her own power for so very long that she no longer knew just how long it had been. In the silence of her own mind she cursed Apollo; and glanced around, however her silent curses went unpunished.

He looked within and for the first time he his gift did not fine him. Aloud he replied: "Yes, I would. Thank you, Mistress Cassandra."

"Just call me Cassandra, I will speak to your parents about the making the formal arrangements."


End file.
